Lydia Diamond On the Air

Lydia Diamond and Kenny Leon will talking today about Diamond's new play Stick Fly on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

If you want to listen to the show, it will be on at 11 AM. Go to WBUR's site and click Listen Live. On Point will archive the show for listening later in the day.

Theatre In Very Close Quarters

Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, put on in an actual Chelsea apartment, has been getting praise for it's immediacy by the New York critics.

In Seattle, a production of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig is shoehorned into a tiny space with, apparently, equally intimate results:

Justin C. Lockwood plays Carter, the typical LaBute chauvinist pig/best buddy of the protagonist. (Lockwood is also the production's director.) At the performance I attended, Carter was in the middle of a monologue about his fat mother and how her weight made him uncomfortable as a child, his description of the overweight mother increasing in brutality until a woman in the audience gasped and scolded Carter: "That's your mother." The outburst stole a second from the performance, an uncomfortable pause before Lockwood regained his equilibrium and went on to work the monologue's thorny language and stick the landing.

How is Globalization Affecting The Arts?

From a review in the New Republic of The Best European Fiction 2010 -Edited by Alexandar Hemon.

Reading my way through Hemon’s book—a handsome collection of 35 stories, one from nearly every major European country or language group (Ireland, for instance, is represented twice, with one story originally in English and another in Irish), mostly by writers born in the 1960s and 1970s—I was surprised by how familiar the work felt. In his own introduction, Hemon complains that the “American reader seems to be largely disengaged from literatures in other languages, which many see as yet another symptom of culturally catastrophic American isolationism.” There’s no doubt that there is very little market in America for works in translation. Yet this has hardly isolated the American reader, or the American writer: the currents of influence flow freely in both directions—as this anthology demonstrates. Julian Gough’s “The Orphan and the Mob” takes place in a distinctly Irish setting, but the broad, bawdy lines of its satire come from a tradition that goes back to Tristram Shandy (Irish/English) and continues in the work of Philip Roth. The romantic drama of Steinar Bragi’s “The Sky Over Thingvellir” (Iceland) reads like Updike crossed with Umberto Eco. Naja Marie Aidt’s “Bulbjerg” (Denmark) has an uncanny masculine anger and violence that we also see in Raymond Carver or Wells Tower.

There’s something a little bit ridiculous about continuing to use nationality as a primary label for writers now that literary culture has gone truly global.

Cool Theater Tricks -

In this Madcap production of Patrick Gabridge's Constant State of Panic, the actress below is NOT on video. Go to Patrick's blog to find out more.

Trinity Rep 2010-2011 Season Announcement

Trinity Repertory in Providence announces their 2010-2011 Season

• Camelot by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

• Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourn

• It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play by Joe Landry

• The Crucible by Arthur Miller

• Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith

• Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling

• The Completely Fictional—Utterly True—Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe by Stephen Thorne

Season Announcements Already?

New Rep Announced their 2010-2011 Season - full Details here.

• Boston Marriage by David Mamet

• Cherry Docs by David Gow

• Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune by Terrence McNally

• afterlife: a ghost story by Steve Yockey

• DollHouse by Theresa Rebeck

• The Last Five Years - book, music, and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown

• Passing Strange - book and lyrics by Stew, music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald

Creating a Comprehensive Listing

Larry Stark has started trying to put together an inclusive list of all theatre happening in the area. He is listing this under "Coming Attractions" on his website.

He includes student productions, community theaters, professional productions, etc.

Is That A Saw I Hear?

Australian writer and critic Alison Croggon who writes the blog Theatre Notes can "smell" an MFA writer anywhere. Here she reviews Madagascar, a new play from American playwright J.T. Rogers (White People).

There are always exceptions that prove the rule, of course - Charles Olson and Allen Ginsberg, who both taught poetry programs, spring lawlessly to mind - but the proliferation of polite, competently-written, dull poeticisms that presently clog the arteries of US lit are a direct result of the MFA creative writing programs, which raise well-meaning young poets to be well-meaning teachers who, in a kind of nightmare of eternal recurrence, then publish each other.

Madagascar is of this ilk. You can almost hear the sawing in the background as the metaphors and themes are workshopped. But most of all, what gives it away is the closed mental universe it inhabits. It's about the thoughts and sufferings of wealthy Americans, for whom the world is a giant mirror in which the poverty of their aching selves is revealed. It's a play that wants to be liked, that assumes - perhaps cleverly - that its audience is a middle class, liberal bunch with vague concerns about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. The audience gets to hear a lot about themselves, and even more about the meaning of life.

Gramercy Staircase

Gramercy Staircase, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

Cantankerous Nitpicking by Me

People keep e-mailing me this article and saying how great it is. Well, I know it is not the Huntington's fault, but, maybe, just maybe the New York Times could have, you know, actually mentioned some more of the Boston people that the theater is "emphasizing" with its playwriting program.

Here is a link to the announcement of the new Huntington Fellows on the Huntington Blog.

Nobody asked - Just my opinion.

It's Tough All Around

Elmo Sighting in Times Square, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

In Times Square this past weekend, Elmo was handing out flyers for his show.

On Quentin Tarantino...and Mel Brooks?

From a Salon discussion about Quentin Tarantino. The participants in the exchange are film critics Jack Matthews and Anne Thompson:

Matthews: I don't see where any of this refutes my growing contention that Tarantino does not seem to have anything to say. Given, he is a master at regurgitating his vast movie knowledge in ways that are original to their genres. He has a terrific gift at writing movie dialogue, he casts his films with eccentric precision and he gives an audience its money's worth. But as far as I know from watching his movies, he's not contributing to the human experience outside of movies.

Thompson: Making entertaining, innovative, original, not-like-anything-else films is a contribution to the human experience. You seem to be asking for some kind of old-fashioned message/theme/educational value to Tarantino's moviemaking. Is that required?



Matthews: It's only required if someone wants to leave a legacy of greatness, which Q.T. confirmed with his London comments. No question, he has proven his greatness to his hardcore fans, among whose numbers many critics and film scholars can be counted. But in the 16 years since "Pulp Fiction," he has not come close to matching that film's brilliance. His movies, while enjoyable to watch, are self-indulgent games for him. If "Inglourious Basterds" is a great war movie, "Blazing Saddles" is a great Western. They're both fun but that's all they are. 



More Audience Members from Hell...

Chicago blogger Rob Kozlowski takes in the Goodman production of Krapp's Last Tape and Hughie. All sorts of things go wrong, but I enjoyed this little audience exchange at the beginning of Krapp's Last Tape:

"NOW I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!!" screams the lady with the oxygen tank.

"HE'S NOT SAYING ANYTHING" scream-whispers her horrible daughter.

A commenter to Rob's blog points out that the exchange is something Beckett would have probably treasured.

Boston Theatre - Friday Roundup

Last Chance:

Gatz is bourne ceaselessy back into the past, but not until Sunday.

The Huntington's All My Sons will close its critically well-received run.

There is still a weekend to catch up with Company One's The Good Negro.

Although you can't get tickets, Sleep No More, Punchdrunk's installation theatre piece closes this weekend.

Over at the New Rep, Indulgences are still being peddled through this weekend only.

I don't think I have read or heard a single negative review of 4:48 Psychosis at the Gamm Theater in Rhode Island. It closes Sunday.

Opening

Whistler in the Dark opens their production of Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare at Factory Theater.

Ongoing:

Adrienne Kennedy's little produced Funnyhouse of a Negro is still on at the Brandeis Theatre Company.

The circus is in town at the Cambridge YMCA as Fort Point Theatre Channel presents Carny Knowledge.

Speakeasy Stage Company's [title of show] continues to kill vampires at the Boston Center for the Arts

Music plays on at Trinity Rep's prodution of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Honk! waddles on at the Wheelock Family Theatre.

Faaaabuloooouss!

100_6794, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

In between takes of the Laugh-In style commercial I was in on Sunday. It was fun, but a long day. Dancing, dancing and more dancing! It was a hoot to affect that style though - I got to deliver my jokes in Paul Lynde style.

And I got to work with my wife, which is always the best type of gig.